The World Trade Organization will become the overall and comprehensive multilateral framework for regulating international trade and trade-related matters. Notwithstanding major achievements made during eight years of negotiations, there will be new challenges requiring rules and regulations in areas not yet adequately covered. Economists, lawyers and authors from trade unions and private companies approach the issues of regionalism, labour standards and environmental protection from different angles and from the North-South perspective. The first challenge is to bring about a "level playing...

The External Economic Dimensions of the European Union focuses on the broad range of recent initiatives taken by the EU to reinforce its common external economic policy in a rapidly changing environment. The prospects of the EU are increasingly interrelated with the dynamics of the world economy. In the multipolar post-Cold War economy, the EU faces many uncertainties and new challenges. The transatlantic link still dominates the EU's external relations but the cohesion of the Euro-American relatioship has been tested severely. Moreover, the transition of Central and Eastern Europe and the...